Clearly I’m in a nostalgic mood, although it’s a funny kind of nostalgia, because the songs I look back to were written long before I was born. I love Rogers & Harts’ Falling in Love with Love, with it’s shimmering waltz and its bittersweet lyrics, but I never like the way shrill sopranos tear it apart. Gordon MacRae’s baritone works perfectly for me.

Ah, that explains it. I was wondering what Gordon MacRae, who died long ago, had to do with anything. 😉

jj

What’s known as the ‘American songbook’ was for the most part written in the 30’s, 40’s, and to a lesser extent 50’s – and that’s just the way it is. Rogers & Hart, the Gershwins, the Berlins, Comden & Greene, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern – they left an indelible mark, but they’re gone. Their best interpreters are likewise gone. Their greatest interpreter, which somehow seems to come as a surprise to most people though not, I imagine, to you, was Fred Astaire. Astaire introduced more songs that have become ‘standards’ than anyone before or since, and they all wrote for him, though he clearly did not have the greatest, strongest, or purest voice. (Cole Porter once said, when asked why he loved to write for Astaire: ‘Fred inhabits a song, and nobody else can do it as well, let alone better.’ Fred’s own comment, with typical modesty: ‘I tried to put them across.’)

So feel no guilt. When you listen to the previous generation, you’re simply listening to the best. Looking for better than the best is a fruitless exercise. When you have Astaire, MacRae, Crosby, Nat Cole, Torme, the recently gone Edye, O’Connell, Lena Horne, and a few others stacked up in your machine, you’re in a universe most of what we have around today doesn’t know is there even as an aspiration. And if they did aspire to it, most couldn’t get there.

Caped Crusader

Agree 100% with jj!
I grew up with the bands of the 40’s, 50’s and early rock and roll of the 50’s and it will never be topped. Music for dancing has died a slow and ever increasing death since those years. I must have at least 300 CD’s of big bands and singers of that era, but the greatest collection ever found is at KCEA streaming over the internet from Menlo-Atherton High in California. They have songs I have never heard before and I cannot recommend it more highly. Worth your time for great listening or pleasant background music. Try it — you will like it!